Don Reece thrust his shoulder into the back bumper of the old blue car and yelled to the driver.
“OK! Try to kick it over!”
At 75 years old, the small-framed pastor from Alabama is still nimble enough to push-start an old car suffering from too many rough African roads.
Reece pushed. The engine sparked to life. He ran to jump into the passenger seat as the car started rolling. He grinned at his wife, Gwen, in the back seat.
“It just needs a little help to get going,” he said.
This couple has plenty of experience helping things get started.
For 35 years, they planted churches and pastor schools across Nigeria. After giving those ministries a rolling start, they turned them over to the locals and retired home to Alabama in 1993.
But this sprightly couple couldn’t spend retirement sitting still. They returned last year to the tough conditions of West Africa for a four-month volunteer term to serve and to find some closure on the Nigerian era in their lives.
“We always wanted to come back,” Gwen Reece said. “We just didn’t want to come back without something worthwhile to do.”
They filled an opening for teachers at the Nigerian pastor school they helped found in 1967, now called Eku Baptist Theological Seminary. They taught theology, English and speech courses.
And instead of closure, they found they left the door wide open for God to expand what they started years ago in the lives of countless Nigerians.
The Reeces visited the Nigerian Baptist Convention and couldn’t take a step without being stopped by a Nigerian who reminded them of the spiritual legacy they left behind.
Lifetime of influence
“You were my teacher at the pastor school.”
“You baptized me and my brothers.”
“You performed our marriage ceremony.”
The Reeces admit they don’t remember them all, but they greeted each one warmly and asked for updates on his or her life now. Many are pastors and missionaries.
With all the visitors, the memories have come flooding back — the women’s literacy groups Gwen Reece taught, their time as house parents at the Jos Baptist boarding school, makeshift medical clinics in the villages and Gwen Reece’s flight with the other women and children from the pastor school when civil war rebels took over.
“We had a long career,” Don Reece said, wearing a bright green traditional African outfit with a matching hat cocked to the side.
“In fact, we lived here so long we didn’t know how much we had become Nigerians,” he said.
The Reeces wear their Nigerian heritage well. When going to speaking engagements, Gwen Reece enjoys wearing the waxen fabrics and authentic sculpted head coverings that add an extra foot to her slight 5-foot-1 height.
She actually tried once to wear them to their home church, First Baptist, Boaz, in Marshall Baptist Association.
“I don’t do that anymore because it just drew too much attention,” she said, laughing.
During their four-month stay in Nigeria, they also encouraged pastors and ministers to students and they helped the son of old family friends find a surgeon to treat a debilitating disfiguration.
Gwen Reece admitted she was ready to leave it behind this time to return home to things she missed most. Like her grandchildren. And hamburgers.
“I woke up one morning and thought I would just die for a Wendy’s Frosty,” she confessed. “I just ate cold bean cakes instead. It wasn’t quite the same.”
After the assignment, they returned to Alabama, where they have spent their retirement years working with Hispanic ministries, teaching Sunday School and doing other volunteer work. Don Reece still swings a chain saw with Alabama Baptist disaster relief and cultivates a garden at home with a flower to bloom every month of the year.
But it was worth leaving all that behind for a while to see what’s come of the spiritual garden they cultivated in Africa years ago. It’s still blooming.
“It sure makes you feel good,” Gwen Reece said.
Share with others: